First Steps Back Home
'Who even are you?'Cait stood quivering on the front step of the house. A hasty goodbye had wrapped up her brief reunion with Jaz, who had rushed back to her car in a hurry. Like a puppy following its human, Cait had followed close behind stopping just as she crossed the threshold to the outside. From that spot, rocking back and forth she had watched as the blue SUV rolled of the drive way and out of sight; she stayed transfixed until the glow of the tail lights faded into the young night.
Steadying a trembling hand, she took a gulp of the Twisted Tea that Daniel had given her. With her free hand she gathered her phone. The text she had ignored earlier found itself given her full and undivided attention. It stared back at her with vicious dissection. The inquisition caught her off balance; her inebriated brain fumbled around for a response.
'It's complicated.'
Cait tapped "Send." For a laboring minute she glared down the LED screen in an uncommon perfect stillness.
The response came.
'You said you didn't do complicated.
'It's not me. It's family shit.--'
Cait's thumb hovered over the Send button. The last two words of her message hung up her train of thought.
Family That was what she had always been told about the Coven.
"These are your brothers, your sisters, your cousins," her father would say to her, almost religiously. But the tow of life had taken its piece; difference of character and lifestyles had left walls and conflict. Despite the few bonds Cait had made within the Coven, she had insisted on treading the path of an outsider; she had spent much of her life distancing herself from the Coven, Magic, and Tanner.
Cait slipped her phone back into her pocket, leaving her last message unsent. Downing the last of her Twisted Tea in a single chug, she dropped the can to the side and hovered down from the front steps. She trudged out into the front lawn a ways and turned back towards the mansion. She craned her neck up; the large house imposed against the young night sky over her.
In quick succession, her chest dropped twice.
The first came from a hard realization: that morning, Cait's return to Tanner felt like being stuck back into a cage. Now, it sank in that she had returned to a home she had never known. Holding the ground before her, the mansion was the monolithic symbol of a double life she yearned to sever herself from in the name of a free a simple life. The feeling was a long time coming; Cait had been ready for it the moment the plane from LA had lifted off the tarmac.
The second was sudden and unexpected; it ripped her from her own head space like duct tape peeling off the skin. The backdrop of the sky against the house flashed. The subtle aura of magic that encompassed the town dispersed and vanished into the dark night. Cait knew enough to understand: the barrier that Carlisle's family maintained to protect the town was gone. The sight rooted her to her spot on the lawn.
Who even are you?
The question burned into Cait's thoughts.
What had seemed a clear choice not even a moment earlier had turned into a daunting debate. She could have made a run; split town and hightailed it back to Cali to pick up where she had left off. With so much going on would anyone even know she was gone before she was well and away from Tanner? She didn't have her board though, and if she knew her parents they'd have magic'd up a way to keep her from getting it back.
With the barrier falling, anything could be lurking in the night. She might have taken her chances with the council and fled; with what the shielding spells had kept away...
Cait wanted to live free; dying in the process did little to serve that purpose.
Who even are you?
She looked up and down the street, and then back at the house. She double-taked, and triple-taked. She took another hit off of the joint; it probably wouldn't last the night. Hauling in a deep breath, she hiked back up the lawn to the front door. Restraining a trembling arm, she pushed the door open and crossed back into the Coven.
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